Lewis Hamilton has won the season opening Australian Grand Prix, leading his team mate Nico Rosberg from start to finish to secure an utterly dominant 1-2 victory for Mercedes AMG F1. Sebastian Vettel finished on 3rd in his first race for Ferrari.
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. efuloni wrote:I can't understand all these people talking about how faster and closer to Merc the Ferraris could be if it was not for the time behind Massa.
Well, Vettel became 3rd before half the race and finished it about 4s ahead of Massa. And Massa returned from the pits about 2s behind him. So, where is all this pace? I see them more or less in the same level.
Just to remember that Massa never had a good race in Australia. Even though he did a decent job yesterday, his best result of the career in Albert Park so far was a 3rd and a couple of 4ths. Acordding to a brazilian journalist (I didn't check, but I think he is right) ,his average grid position before this race was 14th!!!
My point is that Bottas might do better there and that Massa may not have showed Williams true potential in this track. Lets wait for better tracks for both, Williams and Massa, to see where they are, exactly.
Its quite clear how good is the work done by Mercedes. Not only because how powerful the engine is, but specially how good is the integration of the engine in the chasis and how it maximizes its strong points, for example, reaching a great level of downforce and grip in the slow corners.f1316 wrote:
Yes, Ferrari's strongest point for many years now has been high speed corners and straight line speed looks good this year which will be useful given the long straights in Malaysia ( and if stuck behind someone). They also were purple in s1 at Barcelona in testing which is high speed.
s3 was biggest Mercedes stronghold in oz. Variety of different kinds of corners there but I suspect it was in (and coming out of) the last two where they were killing it. It's those slow corners where masses of time can be won and lost and it reminds me of s3 in Barcelona 2013.
If I am not wrong it was a RB, and though they were not particulary fast on the straights it is not easy to overtake Ricciardo in Australia.mrluke wrote:I think Bottas would have beaten Vet, Massa just isn't that good, didnt he get stuck behind the torro rosso?
Sure. Not entirely sure which part of my post you're responding to though.Vasconia wrote:Its quite clear how good is the work done by Mercedes. Not only because how powerful the engine is, but specially how good is the integration of the engine in the chasis and how it maximizes its strong points, for example, reaching a great level of downforce and grip in the slow corners.f1316 wrote:
Yes, Ferrari's strongest point for many years now has been high speed corners and straight line speed looks good this year which will be useful given the long straights in Malaysia ( and if stuck behind someone). They also were purple in s1 at Barcelona in testing which is high speed.
s3 was biggest Mercedes stronghold in oz. Variety of different kinds of corners there but I suspect it was in (and coming out of) the last two where they were killing it. It's those slow corners where masses of time can be won and lost and it reminds me of s3 in Barcelona 2013.
Simple question : If they had a de-tuned ICE might be possible not to carry 100kg of fuel ?zeph wrote: ...
Well, this is what Honda has to say about that:"I expected in Barcelona much better pace in Australia, but unfortunately we don't have the experience of higher temperatures so we could not [risk] losing the engine in the first race," said Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai.
"Our settings are very conservative for this weekend, so that is the reason why we lose power with the MGU-K and the engine itself.
"The heat problem is not only with the engine, but also the MGU-K, we took that [reduction in] power to survive several races with the one engine."
It's not the ICE they've detuned though. It's the ERS that's not running at full capacity. Which actually means they're consuming more fuel than they would otherwise.atanatizante wrote:Simple question : If they had a de-tuned ICE might be possible not to carry 100kg of fuel ?
So let`s say if they run with a 30% de-tuned ICE they must have had only 70kg ?
In that perspective they were at least 1 sec./lap quicker ... so in reality their gap to the others it`s much bigger than 4-5 sec., isn`t it?
Yeah, the grapes are sour, as they said ...Henne wrote: ...
Massa is thinking that Wiliams is not racing the same engine as the Mercedes car in front...
